A 3-GHz fully-integrated CMOS Class-AB power amplifier

Abstract

A 3-GHz CMOS Class-AB power amplifier (PA) is presented in this paper. A two-stage cascode topology is used. All of the passive components including the drain inductors and load-pull output matching networks are integrated on the same chip to reduce the errors introduced to the output matching network and resonant tank in the driver. The circuit was fabricated in a 0.18-°m CMOS process. The measurement results show that the PA achieves a high power gain of 27.9 dB with saturated power of 20.6 dBm and power-added efficiency (PAE) of 12.7%. The PA was tested with IEEE 802.11a (WLAN) 54-Mbps and IEEE 802.16e (Mobile WiMAX) OFDM signals at 3-GHz. Error Vector Magnitudes (EVM) of −26.4 dB and −30.3 dB were measured, respectively. It is proved that the PA fulfils the requirements of both WLAN and WiMAX standards.